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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (11196)	6/5/1999 5:57:00 PM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Note the orders which Serb troops in Kosovo were given, I think the argument that Albanians were fleeing bombs can be dismissed: From the Daily Telegraph: "Defeated Army will bring home bitter truth" AS 48,000 SERB soldiers prepare to pull out of Kosovo, the Belgrade government knows that its people cannot be kept in the dark any longer. After two months in which their sons have been bombed relentlessly by Nato - and have almost certainly engaged in acts of barbarism against ethnic Albanians - Yugoslav families will learn the truth. For more than two months the commander in Kosovo, Gen Nebojsa Pavkovic, has kept a cordon sanitaire around the province, to prevent bad news from sapping civilian moral. Injured soldiers have been treated exclusively inside Kosovo and eyewitness accounts speak of wards filled with hundreds of patients, lending some credence to Nato suggestions that 5,000 Yugoslav soldiers have been killed and 10,000 injured. Now those troops will be returning from a war which has achieved, on the face of it, only fractionally more for Serbia than was on the table in the Rambouillet negotiations. Their barracks have been destroyed. Horror stories of what it was like to undergo sustained aerial bombardment will now circulate among civilians. If, as Nato sources have said, they are guilty of war crimes, they can expect to become objects of international opprobrium. Above all, they will want to know why they have been pulled back when Nato nations were in no mood for a ground war. Some believe that Milosevic could be accused of a "stab in the back", surrendering when his troops were ready to fight. "Why did we bother?" asked one Serb analyst last night. "He has capitulated before the people were ready." The most Machiavellian interpretation of his actions is that he had half an idea to use Kosovo to bring the army down a peg or two, since it is a potential rival power base. If that was his game, he has certainly succeeded. "If it is true that Nato is going to Kosovo and will bring back the Albanians, we have to go to Belgrade to kill that bastard Milosevic," said Miso, 44, a soldier on leave in Montenegro. Miso was proud of the efficiency with which Kosovo was cleared of ethnic Albanians. He said his unit emptied 18 villages south-east of Pec, "eliminating" between 100 and 300 "suspected members of the Kosovo Liberation Army", and sending the rest of the Albanian population fleeing to refugee camps in the Montenegrin border town of Rozaje. "There is nothing left for the Albanians to come back to. Our orders were to leave the area as flat as this," said Miso, patting a table. "That's exactly what we did." Miso thought that the Albanians had received their just rewards for countless real or imagined indignities inflicted on the Serbs. As he prepared to return to the front, Miso showed little remorse. "At first it was a bit difficult, but afterwards we got used to it," he explained. On the outskirts of the Montenegrin capital, Zoran, a 34-year-old sergeant in an anti-aircraft unit, spoke of his frustration at a decade of wars fomented by Milosevic. He said: "Many young people have died and so much has been destroyed, and we still don't know why. Emotions are divided. People feel happy that the war is finishing, but on the other hand feel betrayed by the regime which has played with their lives."

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (11196)	6/5/1999 6:12:00 PM
From: Nikole Wollerstein	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

"Russia is a big winner " - only in one respect: She was humiliated so much that furthers economic reforms are very likely. Like in 1905 after defeat in Japanese war "Kosovo has been PERMANENTLY Altered.." - Will be altered: Serbs that are still in Kosovo will leave with retreating troops It will be 100% Kosovars from now on. "All sides lost in this war, especially the Kosovars " Kosovars will become independent nation. "Serbs .. win these FOUR MAJOR points " Serbs like Russia also winners They will finely stop wasting national energy on building "Great Serbia" throw out nationalists from the government and concentrate on economic development EU is a big winer: All European governments have been manage to unite for comon political goal.First time to my knoledge Major looser is Papadopoulos since he did not learn anything Nikita

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (11196)	6/5/1999 8:30:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

Where Are the Russians? A mystery is growing by the hour. Where are the Russians and what are they doing? Let's review what has happened. Serbia rejected the Rambouillet accords on two basic issues. First, they rejected the idea of a total withdrawal of all Serb forces from Kosovo. Second, and much more important, they objected to a heavily armed foreign presence under the control of NATO in Kosovo. The G-8 agreement differed from Rambouillet on the second critical point. The Serbs accepted the idea of a peacekeeping force and to the withdrawal of the bulk of their forces. NATO agreed that the peacekeeping force would be under UN command and that it would not exclusively consist of NATO forces. This shift was the essence of the G-8 agreement. Serbia did not trust NATO's intentions. The agreement that the occupation force would be under UN control meant that Serbia would not lose sovereignty over Kosovo. The presence of Russian troops, coupled with UN command, was designed to guarantee the Serb position. It is important to remember that the G-8 agreements were negotiated between NATO and Russia. NATO's concessions were not made to the Serbs but to the Russians and the Russians, in turn, were the guarantors of Serb interests under the agreement. Under the current negotiations, NATO is representing G-8 as the Rambouillet Accords with a formal, but not real, concession to the UN. In other words, the Bonn agreements negotiated with Russia are being treated as essentially formal and without meaning. Two mysteries emerge. First, why are the Russians permitting this to happen? Second, what did Chernomyrdin tell Milosevic to cause him to accept this agreement? The Russians appear to be giving NATO its head. As we said at the time, the fall of Primakov severely weakened Serbia's strategic position. Indeed, we predicted a Kosovo crisis on January 4 precisely because of Russia's split with the West over Iraq. Russia has always been the key for us. At this point, it appears that Russia has essentially abandoned its support for the Serbs. Since Russia has not received any clearly visible quid pro quo from NATO for abandoning Serbia, one of two possibilities exist. One, there is a quiet understanding that will unfold in the coming weeks and months and Strobe Talbott's mission to Moscow had to do with that agreement. Second possibility, is that the Russians are biding their time, smarting under NATO's attempt to redefine the G-8 agreement as Rambouillet, and things will get tense during the week. Either is possible, but we tend toward the first explanation. Primakov's fall left Serbia in an impossible geopolitical situation stratfor.com